Since it’s about the Sex Pistols, it necessarily comes with a scent of scandal, so here it is: how Danny Boyle, the brilliant director of the visceral Trainspotting and panting 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionairecould he have given birth to such a lackluster biographical miniseries about the history of one of the most controversial groups in rock history?
Produced by the FX channel and co-scripted by Craig Pearce (collaborator of Baz Luhrmann, until his last film Elvis recently unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival), the series Pistols relies on Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, memoirs that guitarist and band founder Steve Jones published five years ago. Played by the young Australian actor Toby Wallace (who took on the features of a young Michael Hutchence in a mini-series on the history of INXS in 2016), Jones thus serves as the common thread of these six episodes telling the genesis, then implosion, the Sex Pistols, the punk incarnation of the expression “to burn the candle at both ends”.
Unfortunately, we will have to stuff ourselves with the soporific first episode to finally find material to keep us captive until the last. From the outset, Boyle takes far too long to set the scene of British society which will germinate the group by rehashing memories of Jones’ difficult childhood. A teenager with no future dreaming of being a rock star like Bowie, he ends up one day at the SEX boutique run by designer Vivienne Westwood and her then-husband, Malcolm McLaren, whom Jones asks to act as manager, he who had played the same role with the New York Dolls.
The story places great emphasis on the approach, more mercantile and provocative than artistic, of McLaren, awkwardly played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who was far superior in his role as chess champion and mentor to Beth in The Queen’s Gambit. Westwood, on the other hand, is shown to be much more idealistic than his partner; it is around SEX and the musical project of Jones and McLaren that the revolt of British youth will be embodied, disgusted by social conservatism and the musical swellings of progressive rock.
Boyle tries to breathe some life into this first episode by using tricks that have served him well in his films—frenzied editing to accentuate a scene, quick script ellipses, flashback colorful that blend in with the action — but the maneuver barely manages to keep us on our toes until the second episode, when Johnny Rotten is introduced. The rest of the series will not keep us in suspense, but it is at least interesting and the many scenes of the band in concert are very well filmed, plunging us back into the decrepit atmosphere of the English punk scene at the time.
One of the most gratifying aspects of the series is that it gives a prominent place to Chrissie Hynde, brilliantly played by Sydney Chandler. In the chaos that characterizes the brief existence of the Sex Pistols, she proves to be a voice of reason, for Steve Jones in the first place; they will be lovers, but above all friends (until today, by the way). And Hynde will also become the confidante of certain members of the entourage, including Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. A musician frustrated that no one invited her to join a group, she ended up founding her own, the Pretenders, which achieved great success from her first album, released in 1979.
Last year, John Lyndon, the real Rotten, sued his former Sex Pistols colleagues to stop their band’s songs from being used on Boyle’s show. A waste of time: it will probably be no consolation for him to learn that the actor Anson Boon who plays him is perfect in his role. The voice, the pronunciation, the culture and the social conscience hidden behind that disgusting smile (hence his stage name), the hysterical gaze… each of the scenes in which Boon appears enhances the quality of this series.
We’ll be lenient about the liberties taken with certain historical facts (Hynde’s arranged marriage affair, the bar fight that landed Vicious in jail, among other inaccuracies), but hold Boyle guilty of recounting so agreed the history of this mythical group.